"I was sort o' took
back, that's all."
"Took back at what?"
"We won't say nothin' more about it, Gib, except that while I'd
like to accept your kind offer an' put you back on the job again,
I--I just can't bring myself to do it. I'll have to forget
first."
"Forget what? Bart, is Scraggsy gone nutty?"
"Out with it, Scraggs," Mr. McGuffey urged. "Spit it out,
whatever it is."
"I'd rather not, but since you ask me I suppose I might as well.
Gib, ever since me an' you first hooked up together, away back in
the corner o' my head there's been lurkin' a suspicion that once
before, a long time ago, you an' me have had some business
dealin's, but for the life o' me I couldn't place you. One minute
I'd just be a-staggerin' on the brink of memory, as the feller
says, an' the next it'd slip away from me. But just now, when you
mentioned Bull McGinty an' the Brotherhood o' the South
Seas--well, Gib, it all come back to me like a flash. Bull
McGinty an' the schooner _Dashin' Wave_!" Captain Scraggs shook
his head as if his thoughts threatened to congeal in his brain
and he desired to shake them up. "Bull had a dash o' the
tar-brush in his make up, if I don't disremember, an' you was his
young mate.
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